U
D

Conversation

the

08/02/11 | Uncategorized

One Year in San Francisco as an Engineer Turned Startup Founder

By Hadiyah Mujhid (Co-Founder, Black Founders)
Here is a timeline of my first year in San Francisco. You can also view the timeline on Dipity. Hint: You may want to start at the bottom and work your way up.

One year in Startup Valley — August 5, 2011

It’s been a great first year. Gearing up for year 2 in the city. The upcoming year, I will be focused on turning my web apps into a company (one that can make money). Learning how to live on less, as I am now an unemployed engineer turned founder.
Picture.ly makes debut in Chicago — July 22, 2011
Picture.ly, our startup that was created at Startup Weekend has made its way to Chicago for techweek. Pretty excited about the debut.

I quit! — May 12, 2011
Having so much fun in startup land! Founded a networking community, and two web projects. I’m learning more than I have ever learned at work. Going to work seemed more of a distraction from my real “work.” Decided it was time to quit. Gave my job notice, went to part-time, but due to contractual obligations will remain with my company until 8/31.

Startup weekend SF — May 6, 2011
Attended Startup Weekend with the hopes of meeting more people and further developing my skills in Ruby. Met Bosco from Ruby meetup and decided to just stick with his team since he was a great Ruby developer. After many pivots on the first night, our team created imaiku.me (picture.ly) and it’s mostly developed in Javascript (the irony).

Urban Posse Released v.0 — May 1, 2011
After 3 weeks, the group that I met at Railsbridge releases a web app called Urban Posse. The web app is designed to ease the search for rooms and roommates in the city. The site is still in development, but a basic functional site in released. Yeah, we know, the UI needs work.

Railsbridge Rocks — April 1, 2011

Thanks to the Ruby meetup, I was able to take a Railsbridge class on Ruby. Railsbridge focuses on teaching programming to Women or other underserve communities. I met an awesome group of people at the class. So, awesome, we deicide to work on a web app together.

Black Founders First Meetup — March 24, 2011
We hosted our first meetup. Expectation was to have about max 10 entrepreneurs in the room. First event, we met over 20 black entrepreneurs looking to connect. After the first meetup, we’ve scaled to hosting two events per month, and plans to expand to additional cities.

The Plotting Begins — February 20, 2011

Through Chris, I met a few other brown people. He also shared his experiences with me since being in the valley. One Sunday night, Chris pulls together myself, Monique, and Nnena, with the purpose of starting a networking group for blacks in startups.

Networking — January 19, 2011

Attended my first startup networking event. A little nervous, since I was only at the idea stage. Room was largely white male, found some females and was largely welcomed. In our female huddle, we shared some quick experiences, a quick pep talk, then broke to conquer the room. I also met 1 other brown person that night, Chris, who became my co-founder.

Boys are rotten — December 10, 2010

Dumped boy. Wasted a couple of months. Geared up to refocus on learning about startups and launching a startup

Sold Car — December 6, 2010

Finally sold car. Having a car in the city was a major headache.

Met a Boy & Became Distracted — October 8, 2010

Met a boy on my 31st bday. Became distracted. Hence, no real progress over the next couple of months.

Stanford Dropout — October 7, 2010

Already a Stanford dropout. I will be a success. Full-time job and crazy commute proved to be too much for studies. Dropped out with plans to re-enroll in January (re-enrollment never happened).

First Day At Stanford — September 28, 2010

Decided it would be best to take a Grad CS course to sharpen my skills to prepare for launching a Startup.

San Franciscans Don’t like Cars — September 25, 2010

Two weeks in San Francisco, received about $300 in parking tickets. Rethinking the whole car thing

Moved to the City — September 11, 2010

Found a cute studio in the city. Afterthought: didn’t realize it was such a long commute to my job in South Bay.

First day at new company site — August 9, 2010

First day at new workplace

The Big Move — August 5, 2010

After a requested company transfer, I arrived at corporate housing on August 5. Requested a company transfer to the bay to learn more about Startups.

This post was originally posted at Hadiyah Mujhid’s blog.

About the guest blogger: Hadiyah Mujhid is an entrepreneur and software engineer currently working on two early stage startups. She also co-runs an organization that promotes diversity in the start-up ecosystem Hadiyah blogs at www.hadiyah.me. Follow her on Twitter at @hadiyahdotme and follow her startup Urban Posse at @urbanposse.

Editor

Editor

The Switch Editorial Team.

Straight to your inbox.

The best content on the future faces of tech and startups.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

SHARE THIS STORY

NEW COHORT STARTS JANUARY 2024

Join the Angel Sessions

Develop strategic relationships, build skills, and increase your deal flow through our global angel group and investing course.

RELATED ARTICLES
[yarpp]